As the use of digital data for transporting communication signals continues to grow in the consumer sector, more and more homes and offices are beginning to receive telephony services using an Internet connection. Furthermore, the physical network that transports the data may comprise a community antenna television (“CATV”) coaxial cable (“coax”) network. In such a scenario, a drop from a service provider's outdoor coaxial cable plant connects to subscriber premise equipment (“SPE”), which is sometimes located outside a home or small office, or inside the premises. Within the SPE, television video signals and data signals, such as for example, Internet signals, are broken out and routed to their corresponding equipment. A cable modem is an example of an SPE with a coaxial cable connection for interfacing with a CATV network and typically an Ethernet or USB connection for transporting a data signal. To the cable modem, a media terminal adapter (“MTA”) is typically connected if a customer receives telephony services via the data signal. In addition, some manufacturers house the cable modem and MTA as a single device, for example, a Touchstone™ Telephony Modem product (“TTM”), as offered by ARRIS International, Inc. Such an arrangement is typically referred to in the art as an embedded MTA (“EMTA”).
A TTM, for example, provides a user with telephony services over an Internet Protocol (“IP”) data network, which may utilize a cable modem termination system (“CMTS”). Cable telephony generally, the technology related to which is known in the art, provides a subscriber with telephony service that is transparent as to the source of the service. In other words, a user plugs a telephone into a TTM and can access a set of features such as, for example, dial tone, call waiting and other features similar to those provided by a traditional plain old telephone system (“POTS”), typically implemented using the public switched telephone network (“PSTN”).
To provide telephony, a cable modem typically interfaces with a CMTS and other network system equipment, such as, for example, PacketCable provisioning servers, media gateways and PacketCable call management servers. Since voice over IP is still a developing technology, many vendors have not fully implemented the full set of PacketCable features, which are specified within the protocols for communicating among various network devices that implement voice over IP using the existing CATV infrastructure. To avoid communication errors between devices that support different feature sets, technicians typically customize the software embedded into a cable modem, or other network devices, so that the device for which the software is being customized can provide data in a format that other devices to which it will be communicating understand and support.
For example, if a cable modem manufactured by vendor A is to be used in a service provider's network having a CMTS manufactured by vendor B, and vendor B has not implemented all of the features and specifications of PacketCable, then engineers and technicians for vendor A may have to customize the software for the cable modem. This would facilitate recognition of modem data by the CMTS. This would also facilitate recognition of CMTS data by the modem. The customization may include translating the data sent from one format to another, or where certain features are not implemented by one device, but are by the other, conditioning the data so that it is either eliminated from the data packets sent, or nulled to merely comprise a place holder so that the remaining data bits that are sent will be received in the expected sequence.
Since there are many vendors of devices that implement the PacketCable specification, with each potentially implementing different parts or features of the specification, the customizing process increases the cost because engineers and technicians must analyze the interface requirements of each combination of network devices that are to communicate with one another and modify the embedded software accordingly for a given installation combination. Thus, the device operating software is typically loaded into a network device at the factory before shipment to the end user, either a consumer, with respect to cable modems, or service providers, with respect to CMTS and another head end devices. Although the software can also be loaded remotely into a device after it has been placed in use in a network, this still requires that engineers and technicians analyze the device requirements and capabilities, customize the software at the source code level for a particular combination of devices and download the software to the device.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and system providing for the convenient and inexpensive configuration of communication interface features so that cable modems and other network devices implementing the PacketCable specification can communicate with other PacketCable devices.